20 Best Internal Hard Drives (HDD) 2017 [Updated]

If you are looking for the best internal hard drive, then you have found the answer. I do realize that most of you have very busy schedules and have no time to read long reviews, and that is the reason why we made the list below. Our guide includes hard drives with the best price per GB ratio, combined with speed, warranty, reliability and customer reviews. So you can easily find the best hard drives for your needs, saving a lot of time and money at the same time.

Nowadays it can be very frustrating for a non-expert in hard drives and storage devices to find the best hard drive. After long hours of hard drive tests and research, we determined that the Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD is the best hard drive for a laptop on the market, at the moment. It is Solid State Hybrid drive that offers both performance and capacity for a low price. In last years, our need for a bigger storage device is growing rapidly and drives must be much faster and more reliable to manage all that data. Solid State Drives, also known as SSD are the fastest ones, but they are also much more expensive and with lower capacity than mechanical hard discs.It is very hard to determine top pick from 3.5-inch desktop hard drives, because of their vast diversity. Some of them are manufactured for NAS, some for backup or surveillance systems. To find the best 3.5-inch hard drive, you definitely must know where you will put it and use it.

How to choose between SSD, SSHD and HDD?

It depends on your situation, purpose, budget and whether you have a Laptop or PC. No doubt, if you have a laptop, you need to look at SSD or SSHD if you don`t want to spend a lot of money then you should buy SSHD. Solid State Hybrid Drives are faster than mechanical hard drives, but they will cost you almost the same money as internal hard disc drives. If you don`t care so much about the money and it`s all about speed, then a Solid State Drive is for you. For example, 1TB HDD or SSHD drives will cost quite below $100, but the price for a 1TB SSD will be more than $300, that`s a big difference. Also, you need to find out more about your laptop, because if your laptop uses IDE, then you need IDE to SATA. All SSD will work on any laptop that is using an SATA drive connection. On some laptops, you can install both HDD and SSD because they have a place for two drives. Combining both HDD and SSD is the best option to increase performance, capacity and to save as much money as possible.

Use two drives – SSD and HDD on desktop computer to increase performance and capacity

The same applies if you have a personal computer, then you should combine two types of hard drives – SSD and HDD. You can install your operating system on the SSD and store all your movies, music and pictures on a much bigger HDD drive. By doing that, you will have the superior speed of SSD and plenty of capacity from the HDD. Overall you get faster boot times, faster program and game launches.It is a good idea to read through Amazon customer reviews, where you can find a lot of very useful information about the drive you have chosen to buy. To find the most reliable internal hard drive in the long term we looked at Backblaze data and other similar sources. Cloud Backup companies can offer a massive amount of hard drive reliability data because they have thousands of hard drives running non-stop all the time. In the list below you can see the top best internal hard drives, for both laptop and desktop computers.

Top 10 – Best 3.5 inch Internal Hard Drives for PC and NAS

HDD Name

Available Capacities

RPM

Cache

Warranty

How Much?

1. Seagate BarraCuda Pro

2TB - 10TB

7200RPM

128 MB - 256 MB

5 years

2. Western Digital Black

1TB - 6TB

7200RPM

64 - 128MB

5 years

3. Seagate 4TB BarraCuda

500GB - 4TB

7200RPM

32 - 64MB

2 years

4. Western Digital Blue

500GB - 6TB

5400RPM or 7200RPM

16 - 64MB

2 years

5. Western Digital Red

1TB - 8TB

5400RPM or 7200RPM

64 - 128MB

3 years

6. HGST Deskstar NAS

3TB - 6TB

7200RPM

64 - 128MB

3 years

7. WD Gold 8 TB

1TB - 10TB

7200RPM

128 - 256MB

5 years

8. WD Purple Surveillance

1TB - 8TB

IntelliPower

64 - 128MB

3 years

9. Toshiba X300

500GB - 6TB

7200RPM

128MB

2 years

10. Seagate IronWolf

1TB - 10TB

5900RPM or 7200RPM

64 - 256MB

3 years

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Speed comparison

The Seagate BarraCuda Pro is our top pick. It’s the best 3.5-inch desktop internal hard drive for the money. The drive offers a great price, combined with a lot of capacity and nice performance. The hard disk comes in many capacities: 2TB, 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, and massive 10TB. Notice that cache size varies for different capacities, for example, its 128mb for 2TB version and 256mb for 6TB version. It offers more different capacities/ sizes than most of the competitors.

The 8TB model, at the moment, costs just 20$ more then the WD Black 6TB version, and 6TB is even cheaper than WD RED 6TB. With 7200RPM, 128mb of cache and 12ms seek time drive offers a pretty good performance, twice as fast as WD Green. Drive works faster while working with big files, it wrote 5TB test file at 170Mb/s and read it back at 160Mb/s. With smaller 500GB file both read and write speeds were almost the same, on average at 80Mb/s.

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Are you looking for performance and capacity? WD Black is excellent for every-day usage on personal computers, made for gamers, photo/video editors and hobbyists. WD Black offers outstanding write/read speeds in six different capacities up to 6TB. The available capacities are – 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 5TB and 6TB, many capacities to fit everyone`s budget. Drive has a 5-year limited warranty which is a lot more to closest competition which has only 1-3 year warranty. Spin speed is 7200RPM and cache size is 128MB. The hard drive has SATA 6GB/s (SATA3) standard interface. When compared to other 7200RPM drives the WD Black on average was 30Mb/s faster than competition. On average WD Black showed 220Mb/s for both reading and writing, sometimes going even as high as 248Mb/s. Top average latency readings at just 5.0ms. Wd Black is even faster than WD Red Pro and Seagate Desktop HDD. This WD Black drive also features Vibration Control Technology (VCT) which leads to increased reliability, accuracy and long-term performance. Product dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches (14 x 10 x 1 cm) and weighs 1.1 pounds (0.5 kg), shipping weight is 1.2 pounds (0.54 kg).

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

1TB - 6TB

64-128MB

7200

WD1003FZEX

5 years

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3. Seagate 4TB BarraCuda, 7200RPM, 64mb cache (ST4000DM005)

Seagate BarraCuda hard drive offers both impressive performance and low price. It is one of the cheapest 4TB HDD, but also comes in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and 4TB capacity. Seagate BarraCuda has a standard SATA3 connection and 64mb cache. The drive will work well for storing data but if you want to do real-time streaming then look for alternatives, like WD Black or HGST Desktar. We tested both 1TB and 4TB models, Seagate Barracuda is quite fast compared to competitors. The 4 TB model has an Average Data Rate, Read/Write of 146MB/s.Product dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches (14,7 x 10.2 x 2,6 cm) and weight is 1.3 pounds (0.61 kg).

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

500GB-4TB

64MB

7200

ST4000DM005

2 years

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Cost-effective storage upgrade for laptop or desktop computers

Store all your games, music, movies and more with up to 4TB of storage

4. Western Digital Blue 1TB, 7200RPM, 64mb (WD10EZEX) HDD Review

WD Blue represents solid performance and reliability for everyday computing, as all best hard drives should. This drive is ideal for family and small business. And that is the reason why WD Blue is the cheapest hard drive, also number one internal hard drive bestseller on Amazon. Cost per TB is well below $100, you can get 1TB model for about $50, but price is changing all the time. It has 2-year limited warranty. The 7200RPM spindle speed makes it fast enough for home user. Closest alternatives are WD Blue SSHD 4TB (Solid State Hybrid Drive), WD Green and WD Black. All four of them are PC/MAC desktop internal hard drives from Western Digital, they are meant for home computer. You can compare them on Western Digital desktop drive page. Product dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches (14.7 x 10 x 2.54 cm) and weighs just 15.5 ounces (439 grams), Amazon shipping weight is 1.2 pounds (544 grams). Western Digital Blue is the best budget internal storage device for your PC.

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

500GB - 6TB

16-64MB

5400/7200

WD10EZEX

2 years

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WD Blue hard drives have a multitude of features including third-generation SATA interface with 6 GB/s transfer rate, plus rock solid performance and ultra-cool and quiet operation. SATA cable isn’t included with the item

WhisperDrive technology minimizes noise to levels near the threshold of human hearing

The WD RED is the perfect choice for home or small office NAS. A huge capacity up to 6TB, especially optimized for consumer NAS but still much more affordable than enterprise storage. The alternatives like Seagate Enterprise HDD and HGST Helium drives costs almost twice as much asWD Red. WD Red is specifically designed for a small 1-8 bay NAS, there also is newer WD Red Pro model which is designed for 8-16 bay storage devices. It is a 3.5 inch drive with a 64mb cache, SATA 6Gb/s interface (SATA3). Drives does not have 5400RPM or 7200RPM but IntelliPower technology, it balances spin speed to improve performance and save power. This drive comes with a 3-year warranty, also phone support. The hard drive is engineered to work 24/7. WD Red is the best hard drive in the low-power hard drive category, it reached 143Mb/s reading and 142Mb/s writing speeds whilst all other drives could achieve only below the 140Mb/s mark, drives such as: Seagate Barracuda Green, Samsung Spinpoint F4EG, WD Caviar green and others. The drive comes in various capacities: 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 5TB and a massive 6TB version. Product dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches (14.7 x 10.2 x 2.5 cm), weighs 1.7 pounds (0.77 kg), shipping weight is 1.8 pounds.

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

1TB - 8TB

64-128MB

5400/7200

WD60EFRX

3 years

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WD Red is the only drive specifically designed for NAS systems with 1 to 8 bays.

HGST Deskstar is built for Network Attached Systems (NAS). HGST has achieved both performance and reliability with HGST Deskstar series, with 7200RPM, 64mb cache and seek time less than 12ms. HGST promises more than 1 million work hours, which sounds quite unreal because it`s more than 114 years. Newest 6TB version offers 50% more capacity than previous 4TB hard drive. A 3-year warranty covers all Deskstar drives. You can use these drives in up to 8-Bay NAS. This drive comes in four capacities: 3TB, 4TB, 5TB, and 6TB. Product dimensions: 3.9 x 5.7 x 1 inches (9.9 x 14.5 x 2.5 cm) and weighs 3.2 ounces (90 grams), shipping weight is 1.2 pounds (0.54 kg).

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

3TB - 6TB

64-128MB

7200

0S03660

3 years

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WD Gold 8TB is one of the biggest internal hard drives on the market. The main property of the drive is to provide users with long-lasting, reliable and massive capacity HDD that can work with massive work loads and have a very low failure rate. WD Gold 8TB does not provide lowest power consumptions or the best performance out there, the main thing is to have a very reliable HDD that will work nonstop for months and years. Users who seek capacity should consider 10TB version of WD Gold. Product dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches (14,7 x 10.2 x 2,6 cm) and weight of 1.43 pounds (0.65 kg).

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

1TB - 10TB

128 - 256MB

7200

WD8002FRYZ

5 years

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WD Purple is built for security surveillance systems that use up to 8 storage devices and 32 HD cameras. It is designed to work 24/7 non-stop. There is also WD Purple NV (few bucks more expensive) which can support up to 64 HD cameras. WD Purple is available in five capacities: 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB and 6TB. Two technologies – AllFrame and IntelliSeek make WD Purple a better drive for surveillance. Using surveillance hard drive for surveillance will reduce frame loss, improve video playback and the drive itself will live much longer. In total there are three Western Digital drives on Surveillance Series, you can compare them on WD`s product page. WD Purple has very low power consumption which is essential for security surveillance systems. It has a 3-year warranty, like most Western Digital “colored” series. Product dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches (14.7 x 10.2 x 2.5 cm) and weighs 1.6 pounds (0.73 kg), shipping weight is 1.8 lbs.

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

500GB - 6TB

128MB

7200

HDWE160EZSTA

2 years

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The Toshiba X300 6TB 3.5inch HDD is not like most other drives. Especially this Toshiba internal hard drive has an unusual 128mb cache, 7200RPM, SATA3. It is available in seven capacities: 500Gb, , 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 5TB and 6TB. The most popular are the 6TB version, because of an affordable price tag. This drive offers low power consumption with adaptive modes. The big 128mb cache noticeably improves the performance of this hard drive. Also, Toshiba has lower failure rates than Western Digital and Seagate. But HGST has the lowest failure rates of them all. Product dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 1 inches (14.1 x 10.2 x 2.6 cm) and weighs 1.6 pounds (0.77 kg), shipping weight is the same 1.7 pounds.

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

500GB - 6TB

128MB

7200

HDWE160EZSTA

2 years

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Seagate recently introduced us with a Guardian series featuring Barracuda, Ironwolf, and Skyhawk. Ironwolf hard drives are made for NAS and focused on network storage drives. These hard drives can be fitted into 1-8 bay NAS devices. With such storage systems, hard drives may experience problems of transferring vibration. Seagate has a solution here – AgileArray technology that uses a unique technique of balancing on two planes – sensors reduce vibration in multi-drive NAS devices. NAS hard drives generally have a higher reliability than HDDs made for average PC usage. Ironwolf can work 24/7 with zero problems. Seagate Ironwolf can handle a workload of 180TB a year. That’s more than enough for small businesses and companies. The 6TB model has 195MB/s data transfer rate. That’s quite fast, nearly 200MB/s is a good indicator of performance.

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

1TB- 10TB

64MB-256MB

5900/7200

ST6000VN0041

3 years

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Optimized for NAS enclosures with AgileArray

Multi-User technology for increased user workload rate

Do more with up to 10TB of storage

24×7 always on, always accessible with NAS enclosures

Top 10 – Best 2.5 inch Internal Hard Drives for Laptops

HDD Name

Available Capacities

RPM

Cache

Warranty

How Much?

1. Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD

500GB, 1TB, 2TB

5400RPM, 8GB NAND

128 MB

5 years

2. Western Digital Black2 Dual Drive

120 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD

5400RPM HDD

64MB

5 years

3. Seagate BarraCuda

500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB, 5TB

5400RPM

128 MB

2 years

4. Western Digital Blue Mobile

500GB

5400RPM

16MB

2 years

5. HGST Travelstar

1TB

7200RPM

32MB

2 years

6. WD Black Notebook HDD

250GB - 1TB

7200RPM

16MB

5 years

7. Toshiba MQ01ABD

1TB

5400RPM

8MB

3 years

8. WD Black Performance Mobile HDD

160GB - 500GB

7200RPM

16MB

5 years

9. Western Digital for PlayStation

500GB

5400RPM

8MB

2 years

10. Western Digital Scorpio Blue

160GB - 500GB

5400RPM

8MB

2 years

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Speed comparison

When looking at internal hard drives, the Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD is our top pick. This drive truly is the best hard drive for a laptop, because of its fast performance and great price. It is a 2.5-inch drive with 5400RPM. If you can pay more and want something even faster then consider Seagate Momentus XT 750GB with 7200RPM. Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD performance is excellent the drive can write large files with 132Mb/s and read them at approximately the same speed 133Mb/s. Product Dimensions: 4 X 0.4 X 2.8 inches (10.2 X 1 X 7.1 cm) and weighs just 3.2 ounces (0,091 kg).

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

120 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD

64MB

5400

WD1001X06XDTL

5 years

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2. Western Digital Black2 Dual Drive Review – 2.5 inch drive

This drive is very impressive because it is composed of two separate hard drives. One is a 120GB SSD drive, and the other is a 1TB HDD. The SSD drive is dealing with operating system while the 1TB HDD deals with storage. It can write 10GB of test files at 150Mb/s, but reading speed was much higher at 362Mb/s. The Package also includes USB to SATA cable. Keep in mind that WD Black2 Dual Drive does not support Mac OS, but it will work fine with all versions of Windows. The WD Black2 Dual hard disc drive is another great option for a laptop hard drive upgrade. It is also worth noting that Black2 Dual has a massive 5-year warranty. Product Dimensions: 3.9 X 2.8 X 0.4 inches (9.9 X 7.1 X 1 cm) and weighs 4.8 ounces, shipping weight is 1.2 pounds (0.14 kg).

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

120 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD

64MB

5400

WD1001X06XDTL

5 years

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3. Seagate BarraCuda Review

This Seagate/Samsung drive is one of the best hard drives on the market, why? The drive is small, just 2.5 inches, with 5400RPM and standard SATA3 connection. It comes only in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB and 5TB capacities. Seagate FireCuda Gaming SSHD is our top pick because it’s SSHD, meaning it’s faster. Overall this is a great Hard drive for a laptop. It offers great capacity and good cache. You won’t be disappointed by choosing this HDD. We can say that with a guarantee. Product Dimensions: 4 X 2.8 X 0.4 inches and weighs just 4.6 ounces, shipping weight, is 6.4 ounces.

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

500GB-5TB

128 MB

5400

ST2000LM015

2 years

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4. Western Digital Blue Mobile Review

Western Digital Blue Mobile Drive is meant for notebooks, with an 8mb cache and 5400RPM. It comes in 500GB capacity. WD Bare Drive offers very low power consumption and an ultra quiet design. It also has a low-profile design which allows the drive to fit in thin laptops. It comes with a 2-year warranty. It is a good and cheap way to add storage to PlayStation and other game stations. Product Dimensions: 3.9 X 2.8 X 0.3 inches (9.9 X 7.1 X 0.8 cm) and weighs 3.2 ounces (90 grams), shipping weight is 5 ounces.

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

500GB

16 MB

5400

WD5000LPCX

2 years

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Low profile design to fit thin laptops and tablets.

Low power consumption and ultra-quiet design

Reliable and rugged – ShockGuard technology protects the drives mechanical parts and platter surfaces from shocks. SecurePark parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off.

5. HGST Travelstar Review – Excellent Price

HGST Travelstar comes only in one capacity – 1TB, it`s a small 2.5 inch drive, with 7200RPM, SATA3 and 32mb cache. It`s for people who are always on the go because the drive offers speed and capacity without sacrificing battery life. With low power consumption and with the highest shock tolerance in the industry, this drive is perfect for notebook users. In our testing Travelstar performed well, with a reading speed of 124Mb/s and a writing speed of 122Mb/s, it is quite good for a low-budget drive. Its advanced format is one of the biggest advantages of this drive because it increases its physical sector size from 512 to 4096 bytes (4k). Product dimensions: 3.9 X 2.8 X 0.4 inches (9.9 X 7.1 X 1 cm) and weighs 2.4 ounces (68 grams).

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

1TB

32 MB

7200

0J22423

2 years

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Sophisticated performance enhancing features deliver the speed you need for demanding applications like photo and video editing and Internet gaming.

High performance, high capacity, high reliability, and cutting-edge technology make up WD Black, the ideal drive for those who demand only the best.

The dual processor provides twice the processing power to maximize performance.

7. Toshiba MQ01ABD Review

MQ01ABD is a notebook hard drive from Toshiba. It is a 2.5-inch drive with a spindle speed of 5400RPM, 12ms seek time and many features such as: SilentSeek, shock sensor, Silent HDD, S.M.A.R.T and Advanced Format Technology. The drive has Serial ATA-300 interface. Toshiba has promised 600,000 work hours, which sounds possible. The drive has an only 1-year limited warranty. Product Dimensions: 3.9 X 2.8 X 0.4 inches (9.9 X 7.1 X 1 cm) and weighs 4.2 ounces (0.12 kg), shipping weight is 5.2 ounces.

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

1TB

8 MB

5400

MQ01ABD

3 years

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9. Western Digital for PlayStation HDD Review

Western Digital has created a hard drive for gaming, specifically for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. It`s a 2.5-inch drive with a spindle speed of 5400RPM. This hard drive is compatible with PlayStation 3 Fat, PlayStation 3 Slim, PlayStation 3 Super Slim and PlayStation 4. The drives capacity is 500GB. Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (0.16 kg).

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

500GB

8MB

5400

LYSB00TIY4IHK

2 years

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10. Western Digital Scorpio Blue Review

Western Digital Scorpio Blue is a 2.5-inch ultra-thin hard drive, with a spindle speed of 5400RPM, buffer size 8mb, and SATA3 connection. The drive has a 2-year limited warranty. The biggest advantage of Scorpio Blue is it`s price – $32 for 160GB, $37 for 250GB, $34.25 for 320GB and $45 for 500GB. The hard drive is very thin, just 7mm, to fit in Ultrabooks. But the drive will also fit in 9.5mm notebook hard drive bays. Western Digital have added new shock resistance and energy efficiency features. Product Dimensions: 3.9 X 2.8 X 0.5 inches (9.9 X 7.1 X 1.3 cm) and weighs 4.2 ounces (0.12 kg), shipping weight is 5.6 ounces (0.16 kg).

Capacities

Cache

RPM

Model Number

Warranty

Check price

160GB-500GB

8MB

5400

WD3200BEVT

2 years

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What can be easier than buying an internal hard drive, right?

Even for a non-expert in computers, it is clear that internal hard drive plays a critical role in improving computers overall performance. The hard disk drives are storing all data, and their main purpose is to access it based on user`s request. By choosing a reliable and fast hard drive (also called as HDD) you can dramatically improve systems speed, decrease boot times and game loading times. Your computer will start up faster, and you will forget about long waiting for the browser, files or folders to open.

At first, look choosing the best internal hard drive to buy may seem quite easy, just find the biggest hard drive you can afford and you’re done right? No, it`s no that easy, especially when you go deeper and start to look at spindle speed (5200RPM, 5400RPM, 7200RPM), cache size (64mb, 128mb recommended), seek time, latency and warranty.

Various capacities and models themselves can easily mess up your head because they are so similar to each other. For example WD Blue series, as Western Digital states on product page – models up to 1TB capacity can be both 5400RPM or 7200RPM and models that are 2TB and more all are 5400RPM. The same things happens over time, if the internal hard drive is manufactured a year ago it can be different from the one which is just month old. You get the point, buying a hard drive is not as easy as it may seem, there are many factors that most buyers don`t ever notice.

You may end up with many questions before you know that the right internal hard disk drive is chosen. How much storage space do you need? Is it worth paying more for bigger capacity? Which cache size and spin speed is the best? Will one drive be enough or maybe you need an SSD storage?

What will you find in this internal hard disk drive (HDD) buying guide?

The main goal of our best internal hard drive buying guide is to help you answer these questions and collect the best hard drives in our list.

The first thing you need to know right away is why do you need an internal drive? Do you need it for personal computer, laptop, network attached storage (NAS), gaming or surveillance system? Internal drives are divided into categories like NAS, PC/Mac, Surveillance and are manufactured to do a specific job with maximum performance and reliability.

Further, in our buying guide, you will find best products in all mentioned categories. Regarding many people who are asking advice on best internal HDD on the market, we simplified the list as much as we could. To make our buying guide more helpful to our readers we have included valuable information and precious tips about internal HDD`s.

Sometimes it can be a big hassle to find information like cache size, rpm for different capacities. We tried to add all that information by going through all hard disks data sheets and manufacturers websites.

Our unique list of both high-end and budget, high performance or high capacity that only includes most reliable internal hard drives with solid performance will definitely help all type of users, ranging from mainstream (regular users) up to professionals and enthusiasts with high demands. We only include reliable hard drive brands and products on which we rely our own data.

Very long hours of reading and collecting information have been put into this article. We would really appreciate you sharing and commenting our work, write to use if you have some ideas to improve our work or you find some mistakes. Share your experience and help others to save time and money.

What makes a good internal hard drive? – Reliability

Picking the best internal hard drive is not just about speed and capacity. With more than ten years of experience as a computer technician, I very well know that just considering those two factors won`t give you a great purchase. You must take other essential factors like – cost per GB, customer reviews (Others people experience is very useful, and you can found out problems and solutions you could not even imagine), brand reputation into the consideration.

But the most important factor of them all is hard disk drive reliability. High hard drive failure rate can lead to very big expenses and data loss. Here hard drive failure rate kicks in, how to know which is hard disk brand is more reliable?

There are two main things which can help you with that. It`s customer reviews and data collected from data centers like Backblaze. Backblaze is a cloud hosting company they have almost 50k internal drives running 24/7. What makes their failure rate data even more useful for consumers is that they mostly use consumer-grade hard drives.

The most reliable hard drive brands?

Is one hard disk drive manufacturer more reliable than other? To which you should trust your data?

From my own experience I can say that there is no – the most reliable hard drive manufacturer, everyone can get a lemon. Every drive can fail, no matter if it is Toshiba, HGST, Seagate or Western Digital. All these companies are big players and sell millions of hard disks each year, and the number is only increasing, of course, some percentage of them will be damaged. How to avoid that? Consumer wants what he pay`s for, best things to do I go for the drive with longer warranty, it`s quite big difference if your drive has one year warranty like Toshiba HDD 5TB or much longer five-year warranty like WD Black. If you choose to buy the one with five-year warranty, you know that you will have a hard drive for at least five years, no matter what, because if it fails you can get another one. So of course if you can`t afford to lose your data you need to make backups. Best thing to do is backing up your computer to both external hard drive and cloud service, or at least two external drives if you have a highly sensitive data you can`t backup to cloud (There is always a risk for our privacy, and we can`t trust cloud storage companies for 100%).

What hard disk drive speed you need?

The speed of internal hard disk drive is one of the most important factors you need to look at before buying a hard drive. If you are serious about improving your system overall performance, go for a faster internal hard drive which also would mean a higher price.

But what is hard disk speed? Hard disk drive speed determines how fast all the data is transferred and accessed between CPU and hard drive, both back and forth, so you could also call it as system responsiveness.

Though internal SSD drives are much expensive, they are also much faster than mechanical hard drives and can noticeably improve system performance. In SSD storage devices speed is determined by electric circuit board but in mechanical HDD`s speed is limited by RPM (Revolutions per minute), platter spin speed. For technical reasons, the bigger RPM hard drive has the less data it stores. That means that 5400RPM HDD can store a lot more data in the same space than 7200RPM or 10000RPM.

Is there a difference between speed and performance?

After many hours of researching internet i noticed that many tech-geeks don`t truly understand the difference between two terms ‘Speed’ and ‘Performance’. After reading these articles many people starts to think that hard disk speed is the one and only factor that can improve systems performance, of course it can, but you just can’t ignore many other aspects. Searching for the speediest hard drive and ignoring all other technical factors is a very bad thing to do.

I will try to explain the difference between hard drive speed and performance so you won`t make mistakes and understand that speed is not the only factor that determines quality of hard drive. After all the many things the two main we want in our best internal hard drive is quality and reliability.

In dictionaries Speed is defined as „The rate at which someone or something can move or operate”. So that means that internal hard disk drive that accesses and transfers requested data in short period can be called ‘Speedy’? Of course yes, but what about the quality of transferred data?

Imagine that you have ordered two MacBook’s online but used different shipping companies for each MacBook. Let’s say one company delivers your MacBook just in one day but it is completely destroyed, it’s garbage. But the other company delivers it after three days but in perfect condition. Now, if I ask you which shipping company is better? Your answer definitely will be that second shipping company is much better.

The same idea applies to hard drives, one can possibly be very fast and on the same time very low quality, which will result in corrupted files and the whole computing process will fail. While other hard disk drive will be slower but on this one all sectors on platters will be high quality and drive will fully deliver the bytes stored on them.

On the other hand, performance is measured by how intact data is stored and delivered by internal hard disk. As I already explained before many tech-geeks describes hard disk speed as a measure of performance depending on broader vision for „Performance”. I hope you understand the whole idea behind it. I just wanted my readers to be careful and not pick any hard drive just because it is said to be „speedy”, but to look further also on other factors.

Within this article we are talking about hard drives with SATA (Serial ATA) interface, which is the most common, standard interface for desktop computers and most laptops. SATA interface was introduced in 2001, all consumer grade computers employ SATA interface.

However, high-end workstations and servers are often using SCSI serial interface (Serial attached SCSI). The SAS interface is typically used by fastest 10000RPM drives like WD VeloCiraptor, they usually have smaller capacities and are more expensive compared to lower RPM hard drives. Now that we have SSD drives with capacity more than 1TB, for affordable price, SAS drives is a part of history. Also, SSD drives are becoming more and more popular, many people are now choosing SSD instead of HDD. With each year SSD drives are becoming more affordable and with bigger capacities. At the moment you can buy 2TB SSD (Like Samsung T3 Portable, Samsung 850 Pro) for about 800-900$, still much more expensive than HDD which would be about 60-100$.

The four most popular SATA hard disk drive speeds are: 5400RPM, 5900RPM, 7200RPM, 10000RPM, RPM – Rounds Per Minute, it indicates how fast the drive`s spindle will move or how fast the platters of drive will spin.

The higher RPM drives will have the shortest latency and seek times. There are also possible other HDD spindle speeds like 5200RPM, 4200RPM and 15000RPM. The first HDD`s spun at 1200RPM, and 3600RPM was a standard for many years. Nowadays most consumer grade hard drives has 5400 or 7200 rotations per minute.

As far as I know, the only SATA hard drives with 10000RPM are from WD Raptor series, with a maximum capacity of 1TB which will cost you little over $300. We only recommend this drive if you have an older computer (before 2011) with SATAII port. Otherwise, SSD would be a better choice. Read our Best SSS buying guide if you want to find out more about them.

Our recommendation is to go for 7200RPM hard drive. They will provide high speed and performance within affordable price tag. Yes, they are more expensive than 5400RPM and 5900RPM hard disks and also uses more power. My opinion is that 7200RPM hard drive is better investment in long term, they provide the speed I need, and I don’t care about the capacity for my personal computer. Even 200GB of storage is totally enough for me, because I don’t have tons of photos, all unnecessary files I delete regularly, and my work is not related to video editing or gaming.

In last few years, manufacturers have implemented many new technologies in their storage devices to dramatically improve the performance and speed, power consumption and many other factors. Seagate Enterprise HDD v4 was announced as the fastest hard drive of 2015, it runs at 7200RPM, with new architecture it is even faster than the legendary VelociRaptor that runs at 10000RPM.

For home desktop computer and small businesses we recommend to go for 7200RPM internal hard drives

Who should buy 5400RPM or 5900RPM internal hard disk drives? These two speeds are mainly used in power efficient and cost effective systems, like data-centers and backup systems. If you need a hard drive for backups, then 5400RPM and 5900RPM is way to go. Both 5400RPM and 5900RPM drives are widely used in SSHD (solid state hybrid drives). They are a hybrids between SSD and HDD, that will cost somewhere close to HDD, but will be quite faster. Excellent choice for Laptops if you don’t wan to spend a lot of money for SSD.

As for backup hard drive we recommend 5400RPM or 5900RPM hard disks

How much storage space do you need?

Our need for storage devices are increasing each year, now that almost all of us have smartphones, laptops and personal computers the amount of data is generated enormously. When you are searching for best internal hard drive brand, one of the most important things everyone will look at is hard drive capacity, but how do you need? Notice, that sometimes bigger capacity is cheaper than smaller.

Advice from computer experts usually will be to find out how much storage space you need at the moment, then double that number for growth and then again double it, to make sure you have enough storage space for next five years or so. It`s universal rule, which will make sense in most cases when you are building a personal computer. For example, if you have 2TB hard drive right now, then you should look at 6TB or 8TB hard drives for your next PC.

You need to answer – How will you use the hard drive? Do you need it for PC, Xbox One, Backup, home media center or enterprise server? Everything depends on your purpose.

Just for backup, you want to go your 5400RPM or 5000RPM internal hard drives with bigger capacity, or 7200RPM is the system need to work fast.

Gamers would need faster drives, to be honest, for gamers, architects, video editors and any other heavy-user, the best solution is to have both SSD and HDD or SSHD. The idea is to store operating system on SSD, so the computer will work faster and hold all other files like videos, photos on HDD with big capacity.

There are hard drives like WD Purple, which is specially designed for a surveillance system that works 24/7, or Seagate NAS HDD which is designed for network attached storage (NAS) like Synology DiskStation DS214+.

People who are running servers should look at big capacities, 6TB or 8TB. Drives like Seagate NAS 8TB or WD RED PRO 6TB are recommended, they are especially designed for hard work in RAID configurations. Hard drive like Seagate Archive 8TB would be better for large system backups.

For a user, like myself who has just Microsoft Office, few other programs and a small collection of family photos a 1TB or 2TB internal hard drive is more than enough.

Most Reliable Internal Hard Drive Brands

There are three best internal hard drive manufacturers – HGST ( aka Hitachi GST), Western Digital (WD) and Seagate. They are considered to be the most reliable hard drive brands. Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba are the most well-known and most popular hard drive manufacturers.

As for Toshiba, it`s high authority, well known manufacturer also in many other niches, but in last few years their internal hard disk drives are showing high failure rates and are not so recommended. Although Toshiba claimed the improvement in their hard drive reliability there can`t be found any proof for that in real world testing reported by a trustworthy publisher. Their new drives like Toshiba 5TB HDD has become quite popular and gained pleasant customer reviews, but overal rating of 4 out of 5 stars is lover than competitor hard drives. We cannot strongly recommned Toshiba`s hard drives until there are good reports from trustworthy IT experts, like Anandtech, but we have included one of their best internal hard drive in our list.

Earlier there was bigger competition between hard drive manufacturers, there were other brands such as Maxtor, Samsung, and others, but all of them left hard disk drive (HDD) industry. Samsung now focus on SSD drives, and they are good, the Samsung 850 PRO and Samsung 850 EVO are the most popular consumer grade solid state drives at the moment. Samsung beats the competition because they are one of those who creates new technologies and manufactures all parts of SSD. Visit Wikipedia to see the list of defunct hard disk drive manufacturers.

The HGST was totally owned by Western Digital (WD) in mat 2012. The drives that are manufactured after WD bought HGST now are the most reliable. Just make sure you buy hard drives with new HGST trademark. At the end basically, there are two main reliable hard drive brands to choose from – Western Digital (WD) and Seagate.

How did we make our internal hard disk drive recommendations?

Main aspects in choosing the best internal hard drive are Endurance, stability, and speed which altogether will create „reliability” of your internal hard drive. No doubt, performance is one of the most important factors of internal hard drive, it`s the quality how data is transferred, received and stored on internal disk.

It took us over a month of hard work to write this internal hard drive buying guide, long hours of research, reading reviews and comparing internal hard drives. We went through all review and reports we could find, including Amazon customer reviews and many forums. We tried to make this list as unbiased as we can, to include only the most reliable and best internal hard drives. The main goal is to help our readers and give them all the information to make a better decision in one place. Please, comment below if you have ideas on how to improve our article. And finally, share our work if you have benefited from this buying guide and want more to be published.

I will never purchase a Seagate drive again. I bought the NAS Black 1 TB drive and it failed after two years. I sent it to the Seagate sponsored recovery company and they claimed they recovered my data, sent an external drive supposedly with my data on it, but it was completely blank. That did not revent them from charging me $600 for the process. Several more of their drives failed in my desktops (I have 5), without any warning.